


girls bite back

by theformerone



Series: tumblr prompts [11]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Mito and Tsunade are cousins, Role Reversal, Timeline What Timeline, i fucked with the timeline so much to write this y'all, jinchuuriki Tsunade, jounin sensei Sakura, kishi doesn't know how old his characters are so i fudged A LOT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 15:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: For prompt no. 54, "I'm not a damsel in distress. I'm a damsel doing damage."You aren't really supposed to flirt when your village is under attack. Sakura's genin know this. Sakura clearly does not.





	girls bite back

Sakura has heard a lot about Uzushio women. 

She’s seen plenty of them in smaller forms at the Chuunin Exams, especially that one red headed girl that made Minato stupid the first time he set eyes on her. Sakura had lifted an eyebrow or two herself while she watched her own students compete in the secondary combat rounds of the exams. The final fights have arrived, and the kunoichi of Uzushio have only gotten more deadly as they’ve advanced.

Uzushio girls were five times as fearless as the women from the other nations; Sakura supposed that had a lot to do with Uzushio’s proximity to Kiri. They probably saw a lot of weird shit off the coast, growing up where they did. 

“Don’t rely on your eyes,” she advises Mikoto before her bout. “Not much can trump fuinjutsu except being clever.”

The heir of the Uchiha nods up at her. 

“Figure out how it works -,”

“Then break it,” Mikoto finishes, grinning a little bit. That was the founding principle of Sakura’s combat teachings as a sensei; in her eyes, there wasn’t much else to it than that. 

“I’ll do my best, Sakura-sensei,” Mikoto says, cracking her knuckles as she goes.

Sakura gives Mikoto a pinch on the cheek that the girl suffers through with all the dignity that a young woman of her station can bear. 

“Mikoto,” Sakumo says, brows knit in concern as he stops his teammate, “here.”

He hands her his tantō, his White Light Blade, and Mikoto’s eyes widen in surprise. 

“Sakumo-kun - ,”

“Take it,” he says, pressing the blade into her hands. It’s a precious heirloom, and the entirety of Team Five knows it, knows what it means for Sakumo to be putting it into Mikoto’s hands. 

“Just promise you’ll give it back,” he says with a lopsided grin. “I’m gonna need it in my fight, too.”

Mikoto’s hand hesitates over the weapon for a breath before she carefully takes it from her teammate. Her own tantō had been lost in the survival portion of the exam, snapped in half with the weight of a blow from a Kiri kunoichi apprenticed to one of the Seven Swordsman. 

She handles Sakumo’s weapon with gentle reverence, only looking up again when she hears her name get called a second time for her bout to begin. 

“I’ll do my best!” she says, nodding to her team. 

Sakumo gives her a thumbs up, and Sakura pinches her cheek a second time. Hizashi gives her a brusque nod, but Sakura sees him activate his Byakugan as soon as Mikoto descends into the ring. He’s a good kid, but he’s stoic as they come. He’d never admit out loud his concern for her over the noise of his Hyūga composure.

Sakura leans her elbows onto the railing as she watches the proctor call the fight to a head. Sakumo and Hizashi flank her, just as curious, just as hawkish. 

“Calm down, Sakura-chan,” Jiraiya drawls from his own casual seat. 

Orochimaru is just behind him, advising his team to carefully watch Mikoto’s kenjutsu. The Uchiha were excellent swordsmen, and Orochimaru had more than once asked Mikoto to help tutor his team in the art form in exchange for his own student Jirou’s ninjutsu pointers. 

“You’ll make poor Mikoto-chan think you’re worried about her with all that hovering.”

Sakura spares Jiraiya a look over her shoulder, an eyebrow finely raised. 

“I don’t tell you how to teach your kids, pervert,” she says blithely. “I’d be more worried about Minato fraternizing with that redhead than Mikoto getting performance anxiety.”

“You be nice about that redhead,” Tsunade snipes, Shizune looking rather pale about her teacher’s coming outburst. “My niece is a splendid kunoichi. And she wouldn’t be caught dead with one of Jiraiya’s brats.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sakura muses, gaze shifting to where Minato is doggedly trying to ensnare the Uzushio kunoichi into conversation. 

She turns her head to look back at Mikoto’s fight as it begins. 

Sakura is well aware of the fact that her team is ready to make chuunin. She had held them back from previous Chuunin Exams for the express purpose of making sure they passed with flying colors when they finally entered. 

She wasn’t a fan of field promotions, not with the war brewing. And besides, she knew that if she kept her students at genin rank, it would keep them out of the draft, which gave her more time to make them strong enough to survive the war on the horizon. 

Sakura knows that Mikoto has come a long way from the girl she was when she was twelve years old. That Mikoto was only concerned about serving her clan, and lived in sincere fear of failure, and the occasional beatings that came with it. 

Sakura can already see the shadow of the woman she’s becoming; self assured, confident, and no longer afraid to show kindness. Mikoto had a heart soft as anything; her upbringing had encouraged her to show that tenderness only to her clan. But it was hard not to want to be kind to Sakumo, or to tease Hizashi, or at least it was when they were Sakura’s students. 

And besides, Mikoto is damned smart. 

It’s clear she’s been paying attention to the previous fights. There are a clear number of Uzushio shinobi able to do certain techniques; Uzumaki Kushina had those terrifying chakra chains of hers, the Nobi clan seemed to produce those talented with katon, the Hisame with some kind of ice or snow release, and so on. 

It was remarkable how Uzushio managed to produce such a vast number of elemental affinities considering the island was so small. It was more common for larger villages to have shinobi with several nature transformations, but insular places like Uzushio were expected to have only one. 

Mikoto was a natural katon and raiton user, and Sakura had drilled doton and suiton into the girl from the moment they began training. It was good to balance out nature transformations, to know the ways in which other elements could be used against you. 

And Mikoto has been holding her cards close to her chest for the entirety of the exams; Sakura’s pretty sure that all of them have only displayed one or two elements in their repertoires, saving the best for the showy performances in the final rounds.

She keeps away from her Uzushio born opponent, using fire to maintain distance. But Sakura can see the tidy traps she lays between massive Grand Fireballs; Mikoto’s shurikenjutsu is pristine, and it’s overlaid with ninja wire. The next katon she releases will set every last piece of wire on fire. If she manages to run her opponent into the center, she’ll be able to burn the girl alive. 

Which she won’t, because she is Uchiha Mikoto, and is the picture of restraint. When she has to be, of course. But she also can’t, because there is very clearly an explosion occurring. 

Sakura hears the world start to screech and she immediately throws an arm over Hizashi and Sakumo both, dragging them down and shielding them with her body. 

She pushes them down, clearly against their own will and keeps her own head up to scan the area. Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru all have their heads skyward to where massive amounts of rubble are tumbling down into the stands. Sakura scans the arena, and tries to gauge the already present civilian casualties. 

“Sakumo,” Sakura barks, and her student snaps his gaze up to her. “Get to Mikoto. Help her and her opponent safely out of the ring. Report back to me as soon as you’re finished.” 

He nods once, not bothering to hesitate. He disappears in a shushin of bright white light, and Sakura looks to Hizashi. 

“I want you evacuating civilians,” she says. “Orochimaru will probably be having your brother do the same. Get Konoha and Konoha allied civilians out of here as quickly as possible.”

Hizashi’s gaze lingers over the arena where Sakumo is carefully moving through Mikoto’s massive trap, but he looks back at Sakura and nods once before he runs towards Orochimaru’s team and his twin. Sakura makes eye contact with the Snake Sannin; it’s clear they’re on the same page, because he barely inclines his head before the Hyūga twins are racing off to their task. 

“What do you think this is?” Sakura asks, jogging over to where Tsunade has added Shizune to Orochimaru’s team to supplement Hizashi’s loss. 

“This has Iwa written all over it,” Jiraiya grumbles, hands forming a summoning. “Debris incoming.”

“On it,” Tsunade says, leaping into the air as a massive beam begins to fall towards the earth. 

She meets it with a tap of her fist, and the entire thing shatters. As the remaining rocks begin to fall, Gamabunta explodes into the world, using his massive hands to catch what Tsunade had destroyed. 

“Why would Iwa want to mess with the Chuunin Exams?” Sakura asks as Tsunade touches back down. 

“Not sure,” the blonde woman mutters, laying a protective hand over the seal on her stomach. “But their jinchuuriki ran away not too long ago, didn’t they?”

Sakura’s eyes widen, and a breath later, she feels Sakumo and Mikoto arrive to flank her. Tsunade was the current jinchuuriki for half the Kyuubi. As the strongest of the beasts, the Kyuubi had been split in half by the Shodaime. Its yin chakra had remained in Konoha and its jinchuuriki, and its yang half had been given to Uzushio. 

Sakura had S-level clearance, which meant that she knew that the jinchuuriki for the yang half of the Kyuubi’s chakra was an Uzushio kunoichi currently participating in the exams. 

And if Iwa was missing a jinchuuriki while two were in the same place at once… 

A massive number of slim green snakes slither across the ground, and Sakura looks to Orochimaru. 

“Scouts,” the man says, his voice low. “We don’t know how far this attack extends into the village.”

Above their heads, Gamabunta throws debris as quickly as it’s made from the rapid explosions. Rage is coming into Tsunade, Sakura can tell that much from the way the woman’s hazel eyes gain a faint red glow to them. 

“So we find the Uzushio jinchuuriki and protect her,” Sakura says. 

Tsunade’s gaze tracks to her, her teeth sharpening as she allows the Kyuubi’s chakra to fuel her strength. She still looks very much like herself, just red eyed and sharp toothed. She smirks at Sakura. 

“I think Minato has you beat,” she says. 

She turns her head to look above them, where a wall of shinobi have begun descending over the shattered walls of the arena. 

“We’ve got this,” Tsunade says, vaguely gesturing to the several hundred enemy ninja currently flooding the joint. “Sakura, you help my cousin take care of Kushina.” 

“You heard the lady,” Sakura says, clapping her students on the shoulder. 

Just beside Mikoto is her Uzushio opponent, a young woman with bright purple eyes and her hitai-ate around her throat. 

“I’m Kyouka,” she says. “I’ll take you there.”

“Let’s go then,” Sakura replies. 

And they take off as a four person squad, Kyouka just a step ahead of Sakura. The fighting has just begun and it’s already thick. Sakura can see where other Konoha jounin teachers have set their students on evacuation detail while the teachers themselves have stayed to fight.

Sakura knows that Orochimaru and Jiraiya will not dismiss their teams from their sides, knows that Tsunade will want eyes on her only apprentice, knows that Orochimaru was probably as loathe to let Hiashi go as Sakura was to release Hizashi. 

Field promotions all around, it seemed. 

They spear into battle, Mikoto using her remaining shuriken to lash out at anyone not wearing an Uzushio or a Konoha hitai-ate. Sakumo covers their back, deflecting attacks to the best of his ability. He’s by far the best ninjutsu user, and he’s got every basic nature transformation under his belt. He throws up water against fire, wind against lightning, while they barrel forward. 

“Mito-sensei!” Kyouka bellows, skidding to a stop. 

Sakura stops beside her, but Mikoto and Sakumo aren’t so lucky; they’re still deflecting attacks from what Sakura can now tell are a combination of Iwa, Kumo, and mercenary shinobi. 

An attacker gets a hand on Mikoto’s arm and tries to throw her over the edge of the stands into the arena. Sakumo manages to stab his opponent before he runs to catch his teammate, Sakura following up on the other end by burying her fist in the face of the man that attacked Mikoto. 

Sakumo gets an arm around Mikoto and shushins the both of them back to Sakura’s side. She spares them a glance before she nearly leaps out of her skin when a crocodile several sizes too large for this world snaps its jaws at her. 

She yanks her students by their collars out of the way, but the crocodile bites down again, and a bloodcurdling scream fills the air. A genjutsu, that much is clear now. Hiding in Plain Sight or something like it; the crocodile summons saw through it when Sakura and her team hadn’t. 

“If you’re our aid, I’m not sure we need any help,” comes a clipped voice. 

Sakura looks up to see a woman with a head full of bright red hair, wielding a yari, surrounded by more crocodiles. She’s got her hitai-ate around her arm, and that genin that Minato was gaga over just behind her. Minato himself is only a little bit away, helping the crocodiles cover the genin girl’s back. 

“I’ll guess that’s Kushina-chan,” Sakura says, letting go of her students. 

“And you are?” the woman asks. 

“Reinforcements from Konoha, Mito-sensei,” Kyouka butts in. “Tsunade-hime sent them.” 

“Hime?” Mito asks, lifting an eyebrow. “They’re still calling that crumb snatcher a princess?”

“Crumb snatcher?” Sakumo says, incredulously. 

Mito looks incredibly unimpressed. 

“Tsuna is my baby cousin,” she replies. “And she’s no princess. If you’re the help she’s sending, be useful instead of just standing around, thank you.”

Mikoto opens her mouth, clearly ready to defend Sakura’s honor, but Sakura’s shinobi paranoia tells her to move. She plants a hand on Mikoto’s shoulder, and her student ducks instinctively. Sakura spins and lifts her leg in a kick that connects with the foot of an incoming shinobi. Except her kick shatters the bones in the leg of her attacker. 

Her attack knocks him back, and Mikoto’s already on the ground, throwing out her ninja wire to loop around the man, tying him up. 

“One for T&I when this is all over?” Mikoto asks, rising to her feet to bind the man’s arms. 

“I’ll take care of that,” a crocodile with a scarred face rumbles. 

Sakura and Mikoto politely step out of the way as the creature unhinges its jaw and swallows the man whole. 

Mito is looking at Sakura and her genin differently now. She humphs, spinning her spear expertly to knock back one shinobi in the stomach and impale one kunoichi in the eye. 

“What did my little cousin send you here to do exactly?” she asks. 

Sakura shrugs, leaning back as Sakumo fights a shinobi into her range. She grabs the shinobi from behind, and snaps his neck before Sakumo can get his first kill. She knows she won’t be able to protect them that much for very much longer, but she doesn’t want them to become murderers today. 

“To help you protect Kushina-chan,” Sakura replies, dropping the dead man in her arms to the ground. “Though she doesn’t seem like she wants to be protected.”

Mito scoffs, twirling her spear and sending up a wave of fire. And _that_ is something that catches Sakura’s attention. 

“Kushina is an Uzushio kunoichi. Of course she doesn’t want to be protected.”

“Well if you’re her sensei, I can understand why,” Sakura says, a wry grin on her lips as she unsheathes her own tantō to toss to Sakumo, who is clearly missing the use of his own. “You don’t seem the damsel in distress type.”

Mito laughs at that, and well, Sakura’s always had a thing for women who could laugh while causing bloodshed. It was the cause of her seven year crush on Tsunade when they were academy students and genin together; Team Hiruzen and Team Danzou trained often, and it was terrible for young Sakura’s heart. She had palpitations every time Tsunade made a crater in the ground. 

Mito on the other hand doesn’t seem the crater type. She’s clearly more the my-spear-can-spit-fire-and-I-have-a-summons-that-can-and-will-eat-you type. Which is rapidly becoming Sakura’s new type. 

“That,” Mito says, somehow managing to axe kick a shinobi in the head without even remotely disrupting her long skirt, “is because I’m not a damsel in distress. I’m a damsel doing damage.” 

She says this as one of her crocodiles snaps a man in half, while another one bucks a kunoichi off its back and into Mito’s spear. 

“My name is Haruno Sakura,” Sakura says. “And when all of this is over, I’d like to buy you a drink.”  

“Sakura-sensei!” Mikoto shouts, admonishing even as she belts around the crowd of crocodiles to help Minato cover Kushina. “I don’t think now’s the time!” 

“There’s always time for love in war,” Sakura replies playfully, leaping over a kick aimed at her legs and rearing back her fist to break the skull of the kunoichi that tried to get the jump on her. 

“That’s very poetic, Sakura-sensei, but I think Mikoto-chan is right on this one,” Sakumo says, parrying a blow and then striking out the way Mikoto tells him to when he’s fighting someone smaller and faster than he is. 

“Your students are right,” Mito says, slamming her spear into an enemy’s instep. “But I’m an Uzumaki, and we like good sake.”

Sakura grins as she headbutts a shinobi. 

“Believe me, I know.”

“Mito-sensei!” Kushina bellows. “You have time to flirt but I can’t fight? That’s not fair, y’know!”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Mito says blithely. “When a kunoichi who can crack a skull by tapping it offers to buy you a drink, you always say yes.”

“Even in the middle of an invasion?”

“ _Especially_ in the middle of an invasion.”

Sakura grabs a kunoichi by the ankle and throws her into the stratosphere. She darts around enemy combatants, keeping a careful eye on her students, dodging and attacking in turn as she goes. Mito’s crocodiles move to allow her to pass, clearly trusting her as their summoner does. 

Before long, she’s back to back with Mito, her red qipao a stunning contrast to the white-over-teal kimono top that covers Mito’s shoulders. 

“And what’s your name?” Sakura asks, using her award winning right hook to send another shinobi back. 

She moves to the left just as Mito rears back her yari to push it forward in an attack, allowing the butt of the weapon to hit the kunoichi currently trying to flay her alive. 

“Thanks,” Sakura says, throwing the words over her shoulder. 

“You’re welcome,” Mito replies dryly. “And my full name is Uzumaki Mito.”

Sakura blinks. 

“Uzumaki Mito?” she asks. “As in, the apprentice and chosen successor to the Niidaime Genzaikage, that Uzumaki Mito?”

Sakura can practically feel Mito’s smirk. 

“My reputation precedes me.”

Sakura is hitting on the future Sandaime Genzaikage. In front of her genin. She spares a moment to smack her forehead; Jiraiya was never going to let her hear the end of this. And Danzou-sensei was probably going to encourage her to date Mito, for the sake of keeping relations between the villages warm or something inane like that.

“Well,” Sakura says, dredging up her courage because if she’s going to hit on Uzumaki Mito aka _Uzushio’s Storm Goddess,_ she may as well be brave. “I hope you can drink like an Uzumaki.”

She elbows an attacker in the face and goes abruptly still when Mito’s yari extends a breath away from the side of her head, stabbing the kunoichi just behind the one Sakura just hit. 

And while she skewers the woman, Mito leans in close, her lips barely brushing against the shell of Sakura’s ear as she says, “I hope you’ve got a salary to match that jounin vest.” 

* * *

When they regroup in the early hours of the evening when the combined forces of Uzushio, Suna, Kiri, and Konoha beat back Iwa and Kumo, Mikoto and Sakumo will play jan-ken-pon to decide who has to tell Hizashi about why their sensei showed up to debrief hungover with a string of purple hickies around her throat, and the future Sandaime Genzaikage’s arm around her waist to match.


End file.
